SPRING is come at last! There is a primrose colour on the sky, there is a voice of singing in the woods, and a smell of flowers in the green lanes. Call her fickle April if you choose; -I have always found her constant as an attentive gardener. Who would wish to see her slumbering away in sunshine, when the daisies are opening their pearly mouths for showers? Her very constancy is visible in her changes: if she veils her head for a time, or retires, it is but to return with new proofs of her faithfulness, to make herself more loveable, to put on an attire of richer green, or deck her young brows with more beautiful blossoms. Call her not fickle, but modest,-an abashed maiden, whose love is as faithful as the flaunting May or passionate June. Robed in green, with the tint of apple-blossoms upon her cheek, holding in her hands primroses and violets, she stands beneath the budding hawthorn, her young eyes fixed upon the tender grass, or glancing sideways at the daisies, as if afraid of looking upon the sun, of whom she is enamoured. Day after day she wears some additional charm, and the skygod bends down his golden eyes in delight at her beauty; and if he withdraws his shining countenance, she is all tears, weeping in an April shower for his loss. Fickle Sun! he, too, soon forgets the tender maiden, clothed in her simple robes, and decorated with tender buds, and, like a rake, hurries over his blue pathway, and pines for the full-bosomed May, or the voluptuous June, forgetting April, and her sighs and tears. Oh! how delightful is it now to wander forth into the sweetsmelling fields; to set one's foot upon nine daisies- -a sure test that spring is come; to see meadows lighted with the white flowers; to watch the skylark winging his way to his blue temple in the skies, "" Singing above, a voice of light;" to hear the blackbird's mellow flute-like voice ringing from some distant covert, among the young beauties of the wood, who are robing themselves for the masque of Summer! All these are sights and sounds calculated to elevate the heart above its puny cares and trifling sorrows, and to throw around it a repose, calm and spirit-like as the scene whose beauty hushed its heavings. There is an invisible chord—a golden link of love, between our souls and Nature: it is no separate thing-no distinct object, but a yearning affection towards the whole of her works. We love the blue sky, the rolling river, the beautiful flowers, and the green earth; we are enraptured with the old hills and the hoary forests. The whistling reeds say some thing soothing to us; there is a cheering voice in the unseen wind; and the gurgling brook, as it babbles along, carries with it a melody of other years-the tones of our playfellows, the gentle voice of a lost mother, or the echo of a sweet tongue that scarcely dared to murmur its love. Who is there that is not a worshipper of Nature? Look at the parties who emerge from the breathless alleys of the metropolis when the trees have put on their summer clothing!-Listen to their merry laughter floating over the wide fields from beneath the broad oak where they are seated: the cares, and the vexations, and the busy calculations of this work-a-day world are forgotten, and they loosen their long-chained minds and set them free to dally with the waving flowers. They join in chorus with the birds, and the trees, and the free streams; and, sending their songs after the merry breeze, triumph over pain and care. Listen to the voice of one whose spirit now inhabits those realms "where one eternal spring for ever reigns." 66 THE VOICE OF SPRING. "I come! I come! ye have call'd me long I come o'er the mountains with light and song! "I have breathed on the south, and the chestnut-flowers By thousands have burst from the forest bowers, And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes Are veil'd with wreaths on Italian plains; "I have look'd o'er the hills of the stormy north, And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free, And the pine has a fringe of softer green, And the moss looks bright where my foot hatlı been. |